Followers

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Time Honored Traditions

So it has been a little bit since I have posted a quality article here, actually I have never posted one. Rest assured, people who don't care, that I am still thoroughly engaged in the hustle.

Our next area of focus is a time honored method of money making... Scalp... I mean reselling tickets. Ever since I saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High I thought. “Wow I wanna be that sleezy guy scalping tickets to 12 year olds.”

My Hero

On new years eve we wanted to go see of montreal. The tickets at the event were going for 15$. We kept talking about it and not doing anything, until finally they were sold out. They went on stubhub and craigslist for 150$ ish. Soon after we wanted to see girl talk. Again we were lazy and waited until the show was sold out. The Avett Brothers, Widespread Panic, Ween... The list is full of logistical failures. This lead to an epiphany. We are fucking lazy, and so is everyone else. This in theory leads to opportunity, which in turn leads to many theoretical dollars.

Our first venture was Jimmy Eat World. They come to a small club in our town every year, and every year they sell out. More to do with the size of the club than with the talent of the band if you know what I mean. I would like to note now that this band was my choice and not Silviu's.

The ticket buying system for this venue is archaic to say the least. The website is almost impossible to navigate. Most people don't even know if it is possible to buy online. There is only one place to buy the hard tickets. A shitty little shop that is full of hipsters and their shitty music that seems to be open at inconvenient times. Anyways we bought 4 tickets for 120$.

Next move was to make craigslist, ebay, and stubhub posts. We were asking 62.50$ per ticket OBO. We made the listings less than a month out. Weeks pass and we hear nothing. Silviu is being a negative nancy at this point and has already declared a failure with this venture. I knew that if it was going to happen then it was going to happen the weekend before the show (show was on a monday).

The friday before the show rolls around and we finally get our first call. Due to the venues terrible information system we didn't even know if the show was sold out at this point. We talk for a bit and agree to sell two tickets for 75$. He says he will call back... never does much to our delight. Saturday rolls around and someone buys two tickets for the full asking price 62.50$ a piece. We are stoked to say the least. Local pickup is free, so Silviu meets them in a parking lot, failing to remember that the guy he sold the tickets to went to high school with him, and completes the transaction. Sunday rolls around someone makes an offer on ebay. The two remaining tickets for 90$... Accepted. Now again local pickup is free, but apparently people think local is like 30 miles away and two city’s over. This is a mistake we are sure not to make again. Stipulate in the listing what is considered local. At any rate we get them the tickets and go on our way.

All in all it was a very successful dabble into a new realm for us. We want to make this one of our primary focuses in the coming year. All it takes is knowledge of good bands, when tickets are released, being organized and haggling skills. Also a little bit of money. So in the end we paid 120$ and got 215$ for our troubles, which were few. I'm going to chalk this one up as a success.